What is Faith Like?

Even for the most erudite among us, faith is a hard thing to describe. Barbara Brown Taylor, however, gives her readers a great view into the nature of faith in her classic book "The Preaching Life." Faith is an oscillating thing, and the fact is that most of us believe

... Valiantly on some days and pitifully on others, with faith enough to move mountains on some occasions and not enough to get out of bed on others. Since we believe in what we cannot know for sure, our belief tends to have a certain lightness of being, an openness to ambiguity and a willingness to not to be sure about everything. Our belief is less like certainty than like trust or hope. We are betting our lives on something we cannot prove, and it is hard to be smug about that. Most of the time the best we can do is live "as if" it were all true and when we do, it all becomes truer somehow.

Barbara Brown Taylor is rector of Grace-Calvery Church in Clarkesville, Georgia. For those who are interested, you can obtain her excellent book here.